Before devices, for example semiconductor devices, are manufactured and shipped to a customer, testing of the devices is performed in various stages of development and production to ensure that the device meets required specifications. Usually, in a first stage of developing a device, simulations are used where the device (referred to in the following as device under test, DUT) is simulated for example on a computer. While many problems may already be identified in such a simulation, simulations cannot rule out that errors or faults still occur in the real device. For example, nowadays for more complex devices computing power available is often not sufficient to provide a real time simulation to check real time behavior.
Therefore, for example prototypes of the device may be manufactured for testing during development, or final products may be tested in real time. However, devices may be used under a plurality of different circumstances like different loads, different temperatures, different further devices connected to the device etc., and it may be difficult to set up all possible environments with real devices to provide a comprehensive testing. Therefore, for example for testing an interaction of a device like a bus master with bus slaves like sensors, emulation of the bus slaves (for example sensors) may be used. For example, available emulators allow emulating up to two sensors for individual protocols like PSI5 or DSI3 for testing of bus master devices. Such emulators allow to vary parameters of the emulated devices (for example sensors) so as to test the DUT (for example bus master) under a plurality of different circumstances. However, existing emulation solutions may not be able to test a full parameter range required for example by a standard, as for example programming (emulation) of external components of the emulated devices (like sensors) may be very limited or non-existent.